Happy Half-Birthday, Andersen!

Two teeth, sitting up, almost crawling—June was a month of milestones for Andy. We weren’t expecting the teeth and discovered them by accident (ouch). He seems to think sitting is pretty fun. Plus it puts him in a better position to roll and get up on his hands and knees. He rocks and scoots backwards, but, to his great frustration, hasn’t quite figured out how to move forward. Virginia really wants to participate when he’s down on the ground, which has always been her territory until now.

We’ve spent lots of time in the front yard as a family with Andy in the swing, Virginia on her long leash, and Aimee and Marshall (mostly Marshall) doing some landscaping. You can see the work in progress in this month’s photos. The pond is gone and we’re sad to report we had to give up two members of our family—Jane and Sylvester moved in with the other fish in Mary Lou’s pond.

Also, Marshall went to Seattle at the beginning of the month to be in Greg Larson’s wedding. Greg and his sweetheart Stephanie had numerous events planned besides the wedding itself—all were meticulously planned and executed. Marshall arrived a couple days early hoping to hike to Camp Muir on Mt. Rainier as a ‘finale’ to his foot-surgery recovery, but many factors combined to thwart this achievement, none the least of which was a detour to the local emergency room with severe abdominal pain. The doctors never figured it out, but many tests and hours later the pain remarkably subsided. By then, the hopes of reaching Camp Muir were shot, but as you can see in the photos, lots of snow, fresh precipitation, and poor visibility stopped him anyway. Someone died on the Muir snowfield just four days later in similar conditions. Yikes. Draw your own conclusions, but it sure seems like Marshall was being protected.

We leave you this month with a video of Andy sitting up for the first time. See below.

Andersen learns to sit